Room for Everyone

When the playtest opens, a lot of you will arrive at once, and most of you will stand in the same few places. An MMO is at its worst when it’s busiest, so most of my time since the last post has gone into one thing: making sure the game keeps up when everyone shows up together.

Everything in Gildrook happens on a tick, once every 0.6 seconds. In that time the server moves everyone, works out every hit and spell, and tells each of you what changed around you. If a tick takes longer than that, the world falls behind, and that’s lag.

To see how it holds up, I’ve been filling a test world with up to 500 bots, on the same server you’ll play on. Some pack into one spot, which is the worst case: everyone at the bank at once. Others play: they walk the roads between towns, fight, gather, trade, restock and change their gear. Then I time every tick.

On the day of the last post, 300 bots packed into one spot pushed the slow ticks to 760 milliseconds, and nearly one tick in four ran late. Here’s the same server now, where 19 ticks in every 20 finish within these times:

• 300 in one spot: under 90 milliseconds.
• 500 in one spot: about 200 milliseconds, a third of the tick, and not one tick late.
• 400 out playing across the world: about 120 milliseconds, half what it took before this work, and not one tick late.

So each world now holds 500 players. If one fills up, it tells you so when you log in, rather than slowing down for everyone already there.

A third of the data. The server used to send you everything around you, every tick. Now it sends only what changed, and what someone looks like only when that’s new to you. In a crowd of 400, that’s 14 KB a second instead of 43. Out playing, it’s about 1.2 KB a second, roughly 4 MB an hour once the game has loaded. That’s good news if you play on your phone’s data.

Where the time went:

• Monsters with nobody within 40 tiles rest until someone comes near, so the server spends its time where you are.
• Every hit, arrow, spell, chat line and sound is put together once for everyone who sees it, not once for each of you.
• A monster chasing you keeps its path while it still works, rather than working it out again every tick, and monsters that attack on sight only look at the players near them.
• Each of you is saved at your own moment in the minute, not everyone at once.

Lighter on phones and older laptops. The game on your side got the same attention:

• When a crowd appears all at once, the people nearest you show up first and the rest follow over the next moments, instead of the game stuttering while it gets everyone ready.
• Characters off-screen aren’t drawn, and everyone’s shadows are drawn in one go.
• The minimap only redraws when what it shows changes.
• Walking into a new part of the map loads only what’s there.
• Phones and computers with 4 GB of memory keep less in memory, and the World Map lets go of its pictures when you close it.

Fair when it’s busy. When two of you act on the same tick, someone has to go first: the first hit on a monster, an item you both grab for, the last blow of a duel. Who that is now changes every minute or so, so nobody keeps the edge.

Getting in on day one:

• If the server doesn’t answer when you press Play, you’re told it can’t be reached instead of waiting forever.
• If the server doesn’t answer while the page loads, you get the login screen saying so, not a blank page.
• Pressing Play twice in a hurry takes you straight in, rather than stopping at “Your session has expired”.
• The game starts even if your browser blocks site data.

Rust basilisks now bask on the Red Flats in the Ochre Badlands, and one that’s been basking a while shrugs off the first hit.

• Their hide goes into rune weapons and armor, the serpent-scale set, and the rosewood and duskwood bows.
• Their sinew strings a rosewood bow.
• They drop coins, ore and gems too, now and then a mithril or adamant piece, and once in a while a rune dagger.

Enemies hold out against their own style. Spellcasters shrug off far more spells, and archers and crossbowmen far more arrows. Arrows bring a caster down, and a blade is the way past an archer.

Every boss leaves a hoard beside its drops on every kill: one to five finds of food, logs, ore, bars, hides, scrolls and the boss’s own things, and now and then something big. The higher the boss, the better the hoard. The Alpha Wolf’s den is a few scraps, but the Barrow King’s and the Red Dragon’s are worth the fight.

A rare drop table. The bosses sometimes reach it, and so do the bandits, giants, wights and soldiers from level 30 up. It gives coins, arrows, scrolls and gems and, very rarely, rune armor and weapons, which get a page of their own in the collection log. Rare drops now show in red in your chat, in every tab, so you never miss one.

Patterns. The Gravecrown set, the Rangers tricorne and the Bear onesie are now Artisanry patterns:

• They drop from the Barrow King, the Smuggling Captain and brown bears, as often as the pieces used to.
• Read one and you can make it for good. Each make takes a part only readers find: a Gravecrown shroud, Penhale’s cockade or a soft bear tuft.
• Already have a piece? It’s still yours.
• The Barrow King also drops barrow silver now, for anyone who has read the Barrow circlet pattern.

The Barrow King has been redrawn from crown to boots, and his vault sounds the part now:

• The bell tolls and rings on through the vault.
• The floor caves in with a crash, and the braziers catch with a rush.
• The King wails as he falls and groans as he rises.

The vault holds eight players at most. Anything left on its floor is gone once nobody’s inside, so the door asks before you leave loot behind.

Halcyon’s shops. Five shops have new things for your room: sleepy cat bookends, a clock with a swinging duckling, a frog inkstand, a peach perfume bottle and a bouquet in a teacup. The Clockmaker has a brass harbor clock and a tabletop mantel clock, and the Bookseller has an open coastal atlas. In Southgate, the Caravan Stall has an indigo-edged reed mat.

At the workbench, weave the Bramble runner at Artisanry 42. Members can build a Surveyor’s regulator at 58, and its pendulum swings once it’s in your room. Red Claim bruisers drop its salvaged escapement.

The Sun dress is finally for sale: the Couturier on Concord Boulevard stocks it for 5,000 coins, in five new colors besides its own: Rose, Sky, Lilac, Mint and Crimson.

Moving out of a suite: ask the Lettings Agent at your suite’s hotel. Everything you’ve placed goes in your trunk, and your home goes back to a plain hotel room. The rest of that month’s rent isn’t returned, and if anyone has bid on the suite, the highest bidder takes it at once.

Gullhaven’s Fishmonger sells the tackle for every free fish: fishing rods and fly fishing rods at the usual price, and oyster rakes, eel traps and crab cages, which cost far less to make at the workbench.

Recipes:

• Rings and amulets now call for wax molds or silk cords.
• The golden tiara moves to Artisanry 60 and the crown to 68, both lined with cloth.
• Marble flooring takes beeswax, and the Society chaise takes ironbark.

Stores: the general stores no longer stock hammers and shovels. The Lowtown smith has closed his counter, so anything finer, you make yourself at the bench.

• Google or Discord: you can sign in with either, on the account page and the game’s login screen. Already have an account? Link either one under Connections on your account page.
• Two-factor login is harder to get around. If someone gets into your email, the “secure my account” link no longer turns off two-factor you’ve had on for more than two weeks.
• Names: character names can’t pass for staff or the game anymore.
• The website: Privacy and Terms pages are linked from every page’s footer, and the homepage answers the questions people ask first: is it free, is there anything to download, can I play on a phone, and who can attack me.

• You no longer hear other people’s fights.
• Design mode can’t get stuck on “Saving...” anymore.
• A trade can’t cancel someone’s teleport.
• Visitors can’t pick things up off your suite’s floor by reaching in from the gallery.
• Chat can’t stack accents into tall columns over your head.
• While the game saves you as you log out, nothing can attack or poison you, and you don’t seem to walk on the spot to everyone else.
• Elodie no longer breaks off an outing because someone else is fighting nearby.
• Guards and monsters that turn on someone new now chase them properly.
• A Barrow King felled by his very first blow gets up again, and the bell tolls as it should.
• Clicking somewhere very far away walks you as near as it can in one go. Click again to carry on.

When our Discord reaches 100 members, I’ll post the playtest’s date and time there and on X. If you want in, join the Discord and bring your friends.

I’ll see you in the lobby.